BEL Network Integration & Support

The Situation

Founded more than 20 years ago by Chuck Bell, Belnis provides small- and medium-sized businesses with complete IT support. Not only does Belnis build and maintain network infrastructure, they utilize a managed services model that is tailored to the needs of each client.

Being experienced in the industry, Bell knew the time had come to switch his clients from tape to cloud backup. "With tape, you never know what kind of a situation you are walking into when you go onsite," he said. "Are we going to be able to find the tape? Is the tape going to be intact? Did anyone set the tape somewhere near a magnetic field and partially erase it? You have all of those things to consider—the pressure is already on."

"With cloud backup we know that it's stored in a secure data vault," Bell explained. "The data is stored away from the site, so there's not a chance of somebody doing harm to it."

The Challenge

Belnis was ready to make the switch to cloud backup, but their clients were hesitating.

Bell said, "I couldn't sell cloud backup. I couldn't sell it at all. The factor wasn't only what we could offer them, but being able to offer it a good price."

Belnis tried many products—a few well-known consumer brands and even an expensive enterprise-level solution—but couldn’t find cloud backup that had all the features they were looking for along with a reasonable pricing structure.

"Our provider needed to have a storage facility—a lot of the other providers we talked to wanted us to use our own facility or use a different one," Bell elaborated. "We also needed to be able to backup both SQL and Exchange—other companies wanted to charge an extra amount for each of those added features."

The Solution

When Belnis found Intronis and had the opportunity to trial the software, they knew they found the solution they had been looking for.

Bell explained, "It's very easy to use. It made sense—both the install process and the actual process of choosing files and folders. It was intuitive, easy to use, and it setup in a snap. We liked the fact that we also got notifications, so we would know when clients got good or bad backups. And we had an idea if it didn't back up as to why it didn't."

"And the fact that Intronis' data centers had two locations—one on the east and one on the west coast—was one of the deciding factors. Also having both SQL and Exchange all included with Intronis was important. And you charge by the amount of data, so with you guys we could have several different servers backing up simultaneously."

The Result

With Intronis, Belnis has been able to sell cloud backup to 95 percent of its client base.

"The revenue part has just been great," Bell said. "We've been able to increase our recurring revenue about 20 percent."

Belnis has also had very good success with restoration. "We had clients lose an entire folder or some files, and we've gone in and restored them at a moment's notice. We just remoted in and did it. You can see and feel the relief and the satisfaction of the client."

Bell concluded, "Bottom line is that Intronis has a good product, a good staff of people to work with on both the sales side and the technical side, and it comes in at a very attractive price."